As we previewed in our story about Costco, May retail sales (as measured by the Census Bureau-adjusted) slowed from April’s pace as the tariff pull-forward lapsed and leisure activity quickened (again taking share from spending on goods). Additionally, weather for most of the month and country was absolutely horrid for seasonal sales. Building materials & garden supplies fell -1.1% in May from April +2.1% increase. Advan’s measure for NAICs #44422, which is 11K nursery, garden centers, and farm supply stores around the country, declined a similar amount.

Last week, one of our Advan Buysider names, Chewy , reported fiscal Q1 results, which once again demonstrated improving business momentum and unit economics. As a reminder, Chewy’s market share growth is accelerating due to the accruing benefit of more and more Autoship customers. (That share gain, plus Amazon’s, is further depressing foot traffic to pet specialty retailers.) Chewy’s higher volume in turn is allowing it to improve its fulfillment center (FC) utilization; this is key to improving its unit economics as they stood up too much capacity during the 2020 / ’21 pet boom, which became a drag on profits when the boom, busted.

Despite tremendous noise on trade and the economy, and our ongoing frozen housing market, Restoration Hardware’s fiscal Q1 results and outlook affirmed what Advan’s traffic and transaction data suggest, that is – demand remains undiminished for the high-end brand, as well as peer Arhaus. Written orders, which measures current demand, is no longer disclosed by Restoration Hardware (RH), and so the next quarter’s guidance is a proxy; guidance for fiscal Q2 revenue growth was +15% (on an adjusted-basis) which is above for the April-end period of +12%, or reflective of stronger demand.

Despite dismal sentiment about the low-end consumer and consumer confidence, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and Five Below blew past Wall Street expectations on comp-store sales, with both comp-ticket and comp-transactions driving a material improvement in the 2- and 3-year comp-store sales trend as shown in the table below. With Dollar General’s results, we wrote about the upside stemming from trade-in, share-of-stomach gains from the fast food channel, and better retail execution / fundamentals.

As was anticipated by Advan’s data, Costco reported another strong comp-store sales increase for May (+5.5%), but at a touch lower rate than the March / April trend of +7.2% / +8.6% (adjusted) which benefited from pull-forward on large ticket items which consumer purchased to get in front of prices increases resulting from tariffs. General merchandise comp sales, which is where the pull-forward happened, went from +10% in March / April to around +5%.

Fiscal Q1 comp-sales results for off-price retailers were softer across the board due to a moderation in traffic. Traffic per location was slightly up for Burlington and HomeGoods and slightly down for TJ Maxx and Ross Dress for Less (per Advan). Results for the traditional department stores were less bad. In sum, this demonstrates that the share transfer from traditional to off-price slowed. In our view, this is the result of the traditional department stores executing better, rather than off-price brands executing “less well.

Lowe’s and Home Depot reported relatively stable results in what is a downbeat housing and home improvement market, as is shown by industry traffic in the chart below. Of note, both benefited from a pull-forward of larger ticket durable goods (appliances) ahead of any price increases resulting from tariffs; the other big-ticket categories like flooring, kitchen, and bath remain in a slump. Commercial building was the strongest end-market as demonstrated by Home Depot Supply (HDS) outperformance.

In contrast to the frequent press articles that Target’s foot traffic and sales were down mid-to-high single-digits due to consumer backlash over Target’s DEI policy changes, comp-transactions / traffic was down only -2.4%. Comp-sales for the stores were down -5.7%, which was partially offset by a +4.7% in digital sales (which is mainly store-delivery and curbside). As shown in the table below, February was the softest month per Advan traffic, and the period’s reported traffic* was largely in line with the Advan estimate.

Dick’s Sporting Goods acquiring Foot Locker was unexpected, and despite management’s claim that it would be accretive to earnings, along with a preliminary fiscal Q1 results where comp-sales were above estimates (+4.1% vs expectations of +2.6%), the stock dumped -15%. Our quick thoughts and then our data. First, the near-term accretion was simple math, ahead of the news Dick’s traded at 10.1X EV / EBITDA on a NTM basis, above Foot Locker’s 8.

In our review of Q4 Walmart Inc. results, we highlighted Sam’s compounding success in gaining household share which stems from strong execution on merchandise and service contemporizing (while also benefiting from the favorable macro-consumer trends that are lifting the entire club sector). Today, we shift the focus to Walmart US and its grocery business for this Q1 commentary. (We’ll come back to Walmart’s general merchandise results post Target’s earnings release next week.